Forever
by chimingofthebells
Summary: Arthur nearly loses Merlin on one dark night in a hospital.


**AN: It has come to my attention that I have a bit of an addiction when it comes to killing off Merlin. If you've read my past fics, you might know this. I had this first scene in my head one night when I couldn't sleep, so I jotted it down. In the morning I realized I should give my readers a break, so I gave it a happy ending. And yeah, it's written in first person, but bear with me on this. Enjoy!**

* * *

It's dark. The world beyond the hospital room darkened some time ago, but nobody has been able to summon the will to turn on the lights. A nurse stands to one side, clutching a clipboard in her hands. I've already roared at her to do something, to _save him, for gods sake, he's dying!_ but she patiently, if not somewhat exasperatedly, informed me that there was nothing she could do. The disease has taken hold of his heart now. It's a matter of waiting a few minutes.

After she said that she ceased to exist. She, along with the two other standing figures in the room, have faded into nothingness. None of them tried to stop me from clambering into the bed and molding myself around the shaking body of my fiancée.

"Merlin," I whisper, pressing my cheek to his hair and tightening my hold on him. If it hurts him, he doesn't show it. He doesn't respond at all. But I can feel him trembling, valiantly fighting for air.

With his back slumped against my chest, I can't get a very good look at his face. I know it's gray and ashen, slick with sweat around red rimmed eyes. Maybe there are tears, maybe there aren't. I know he's afraid, but selfishly I think that he can't be more afraid than I am.

"Merlin," I say again, burying my face in his hair and inhaling desperately. "Merlin, Merlin, Merlin."

My voice breaks on the last incantation of his name.

"I love you," I sob, but my words are so muffled by tears and his hair that he might not even hear me. "I'll never love again. Never. You're it for me, Merlin, that's it. Once you're gone–"

The sentence ends in a choke, and I go back to chanting his name, rocking lightly back and forth. He shudders, sending a jolt of terror through me, because this could be it.

But it isn't. The heart monitor continues it's monotone, albeit feebly. With my eyes screwed shut against Merlin's head, I can't see all the machines surrounding the bed, with their wires and buttons and the tubes that they've stuck into his body, snaking round his arms, taped to his chest and hung under his nose. They shouldn't be there, I think. They don't belong there. They've kept him alive this long, but they've failed. Even the machines can't save him.

Somewhere in the room someone is crying, someone other than me. It can't be the nurse, who must see these things all the time, and it certainly isn't my father, who is only here because he happened to be visiting today. It must be Hunith, stifling her sobs into a handkerchief. Part of me knows I should let her see her son in his last moments, but I can't summon the willpower to pry myself from Merlin's side. I can't even loosen my hold.

Merlin convulses once more and I give an involuntary whimper– strangled and too loud. The beeping of the heart monitor increases in speed.

"I love you," I choke out, louder this time because he needs to hear it now. If he doesn't he will never hear it again from me. "Merlin."

Merlin moves, suddenly, and I lift my head to see what he does. One hand moves from where it rested limply above the starch hospital covers. I feel him reaching for my hand and I lift it so that he is holding it in front of him. His fingers go to the plain gold band. He caresses it a few times, his movements shaking and weak. My eyes are drawn to the matching one on his other hand, glinting in the city lights streaming from the window.

He kisses the ring on my finger, though its less of a kiss and more of him holding limp lips to my hand. I understand. All of his strength has left him, and this is his way of telling me that he loves me. And perhaps his way of saying goodbye.

"I love you," I say again, and then "Merlin," simply because I still can. The rest of my vocabulary is beyond my reach.

"I love you," I say, rocking him back and forth, holding him in his arms as we tremble. "I love you, I love you, I love you, I.."

I don't know how many times I repeat it, but I say it over and over again, into his hair or into his ears, ears I'll never speak into again after tonight. I keep saying it, as many times as I can as long as the heart monitor beeps. It's as though I'm trying to make up for all the moments I'm losing. The future he and I had together, were supposed to have together. All the 'I love you' s I was supposed to say to him that I'll never get to say. When we part ways for work in the mornings or when we're drifting off to sleep together– all those moments where I would say it have been cruelly stolen away, so I have to get them in now, every single one. It's crucial that he knows, before he–

Suddenly I become aware that there's a flat tone filling the room, replacing the steady beeping of the heart monitor. Instead of opening my eyes to see the flat line on the screen, I bury my face deeper into Merlin's hair and sob in earnest.

I continue to hold him, though I know it's useless now. His body has gone still in my arms, so I grip him even tighter, shuddering hard.

The nurse steps forward and gently tries to pry me away, but I shove her off. She falls back without much complaint. Hunith comes too, but instead of pushing me away she just touches my arm. Her fingers are shaking too, but it's comforting where she brushes my skin. She's Merlin's mum after all, I think. While she's alive a little bit of him still is too.

After some time that may as well be days, for all the meaning time has, I feel a heavier weight on my shoulder. This is what brings me, finally, to the surface, because the only person who's hand that could be is my father's.

I look up to see him staring down at me. He never approved of my relationship with Merlin, but now he looks at me with grief and a kind of fierce somberness.

"I'm sorry, Arthur," he says gravely.

His words unlock a fresh wave of sobs, and I allow myself to be extracted from the bed and gathered into my fathers arms. The embrace is awkward, as my father has never been good at hugging nor consoling, but he holds me all the same now, stoically enduring through my grief.

The nurse bustles about quietly, switching off all the machines. There are quite a few of them.

Finally my father pulls away and I turn around. The lights are still off, but I can see Merlin lying in a halo of moonlight and street lights. He looks peaceful now. His dark eyelashes fan out against his perfect skin. I lean forward and run a knuckle against his exposed cheekbone, then rub my thumb along his jaw. I bend down to brush his hair out of the way so that I can press a final kiss to his temple.

Gently my father presses a consoling hand against my shoulder, and Hunith wraps her hand around my other elbow in a crushing grip. They turn me from his still, angelic body and I allow myself to be guided from the room.

We don't make it two steps into the hallway before there's a shout behind us. I jolt and turn to see the nurse frantically switching the machines back on, yelling wildly, "Get me Doctor Kilgarrah! Now!"

The next few minutes are a blur. Hunith, my father, and I are shooed into a corner as an old doctor and a team of nurses rush into the room, gather up the machines, and take Merlin away. We follow them, but my demands to know what's going on are ignored.

Finally he is taken into a room with no windows, and an intern tells me that I'll have to wait.

After some hours of Hunith crying into her hands and me jiggling my knee nervously, one of the double doors opens and the old doctor steps out. Hunith, father, and I stand to greet him. Because I am in the middle of the group, he addresses me first.

"I'm Doctor Kilgarrah," he says. His voice is withered, and if I could think of something beyond Merlin, I would say he sounds mystical.

"How's Merlin?" Hunith asks, "What's going on in there?"

"I think that's something we'd all like to know," Doctor Kilgarrah says, a hint of a smile playing around his lips. "He should be dead. And, for all intents and purposes, he was for a few minutes. But it appears he is not anymore."

"So he's alive?" I ask eagerly, hardly daring to believe it. The doctor chuckles, and for a moment I spare a thought to wonder why he seems to find this all so funny.

"Quite alive. In fact, the sickness seems to be receding from his body as we speak."

"But how?" I say, "He's been sick for months, how could he be suddenly alright?"

Doctor Kilgarrah fixes me with a look over the top of his clipboard, somehow managing to be amused and stern at the same time. "Mr. Pendragon, do you _want _Mr. Emrys to die?"

"What?" I splutter indignantly, "How could you even say that? No, of course not!"

"Then I suggest you do not question it and be grateful for miracles," Doctor Kilgarrah says. "He's resting now, but he'll be awake by morning. Until then I suggest you leave him be."

"But–"

But Doctor Kilgarrah walks away without much more than nod. I watch him go down the hall, his long doctor's coat billowing behind him almost like wings. It occurs to me that I never told him my last name.

* * *

"I thought I lost you," I murmur into Merlin's hair. The last time I was in this position, I thought he was dying. Now I cling to him as though he might float away at any moment.

"You won't get rid of me that easily," Merlin retorts, and I laugh somewhat hysterically. I nuzzle into his hair, breathing in his intoxicating, living scent.

The room is empty apart from us, Hunith already having visited her son. The blinds are thrown open, so that the room shines a harsh white in the morning sun. Merlin is already healthier than he was twenty four hours ago. The gray has gone from his skin, and he's talking and moving with more ease than he's displayed in the last three months.

"I don't know what happened," Merlin says, running his fingers up and down my arms, his touch feather light. He knows this is the best way to soothe me, whenever I'm stressed or angry, or distraught as I am now. "I thought I was dying. I even felt myself die, actually, but then..."

"What?"

"It's weird," He mumbles, a crease forming in his forehead as he tries to make sense of whatever happened. "There was this voice. I don't remember ever hearing it before, but it felt familiar, somehow. I don't even remember what exactly it said, to be honest." His fingertips continue their trail along my arms, coming up around my hands to link his fingers through mine. Our rings clack against each other. "Something about unfulfilled destiny and coins."

I don't really have a response for that, so I laugh. "Your afterlife is weird."

"That's not the weirdest thing, though," Merlin says, twisting around to meet my eyes. The red has receded from them, leaving the bright blue eyes I fell in love with. "The voice, when I woke up I heard it again. Only it was the doctor's. Doctor Kilgarrah's."

"That guy? He seems a bit dodgy to me."

"I know, but it was definitely him. But he just told me I was lucky to be alive and left."

I'm silent for a beat. "He must have worked some crazy magic, then."

Merlin laughs. "I guess he must have."

There's not much more to say, so I duck my head and press my mouth to his.

"Don't do that to me again," I whisper against his lips. He shakes his head, bringing up a hand to cup my jaw so I can lean into the warm touch.

"I won't," he promises.

We kiss again, a silent promise of many more kisses to come.


End file.
